


Vulnerability

by IncognitoDuck11



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Dolls, Gen, Horror, My Charles is Wren, Nudity, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Tea Parties, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture, not the fun kind, welcome to hell i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28590372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncognitoDuck11/pseuds/IncognitoDuck11
Summary: Before the dollhouse, Aria thought she understood exactly what being vulnerable was.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Vulnerability

**Author's Note:**

> So welcome to hell.
> 
> I wrote this at five am and utterly creeped myself out. It's kind of intense, so tread lightly if you're sensitive to non-con elements and/or torture. Nothing happens rape-wise, but being touched non-sexually against your will while naked is pushing it. Also, I'd like to note that I was imagining Wren as my Charles in this one. Although you can imagine that it's Charlotte, too, I guess. 
> 
> Um... so don't enjoy? Yeah, no. I don't think anyone is going to enjoy this. Happy suffering, I guess.

-.-.-.-

_ Vulnerability.  _

Before the dollhouse, Aria thought she understood exactly what being vulnerable was. It was that feeling of being watched, all the time, by someone that wanted to hurt them. Or it was the less sinister side of the same coin: talking about how she felt, being open about who she was. That was what vulnerability had meant. That was what it should have meant for the remainder of her ideally long, maybe boring, but relatively safe, normal life. 

Except it didn't. Except their masked captor had redefined what it meant to be vulnerable. Charles had always enjoyed reminding them that they were dolls, bending them to his will, wearing them down until they snapped like brittle sidewalk chalk, but this wasn't a game anymore. This was crossing lines that Aria had never wanted to imagine being crossed. She hadn’t wanted to even acknowledge the possibility, but it made perfect sense. This was just another step up in the hierarchy of control he boasted over them. Of  _ course _ it was always going to come to something like this, if he had no qualms about objectifying them in the first place.

Her heart was beating so violently in her ears that she could barely hear what he was doing, and she could barely hear her friends’ ragged breaths beside her, so quiet that she couldn't be sure they were actually there. And anyway, knowing they were in the same boat might have comforted her, except this situation was a nightmare. This was some special circle of hell that they were trapped in. Only she couldn't reach out and hang onto them for dear life, because she couldn't even lift a finger off the freezing surface of the metal table she was laid out on like a body in a morgue. She couldn't speak, or blink, and her breaths were so shallow that it felt like she was breathing through a straw. And that didn't do anything to help the waves of panic that kept washing over her. She wanted to scream her throat raw, flail her arms and legs around until she landed a solid blow against their tormentor’s skull, curl up into a ball and sob into her knees, but she was completely, utterly paralyzed. 

That wasn't even the worst part. Her clothes had been stripped away — every shred of fabric that could have spared her some sliver of dignity, gone — and her bare skin was exposed to the cool, sterile air of the room, goosebumps rising across her flesh. Every now and then, she could see him from the corner of her eye, looming above her, his expressionless mask blank and almost more menacing than if she could have seen his real face. What scared her more than anything was the fact that she couldn't read him, and therefore was left to wonder over and over what his intentions were. She didn't know if he was looking at her like a piece of meat, his eyes black and hungry like a predator’s under that mask, and she couldn't tell if… if something unthinkable was about to happen. She couldn't tell if he got off on the sight of them just lying there, exposed and helpless, and the uncertainty was the worst kind of torture.

His gloved hand kept periodically stroking through her hair, and she wanted nothing more than to twist away from his gentle, almost loving touch. It frightened her more than if he had been blatantly rough and callous, because this calm touch felt more like that of a master petting his animal, like a little kid admiring his dolly. Like she really was  _ his _ , something he owned and loved and took care of, and that was worse than being outright hated. She might be able to handle being victimized. She could shut down and survive it, and then she could begin the lengthy process of learning to cope with it, whatever that might mean, if they ever escaped. But this felt like he was chaining her to a post, putting her on display behind cellophane and cardboard, saving her for later… promising that she really would grow to love him eventually. And who knew? 

That would be the worst end to this nightmare, if they actually became his. If he really did painstakingly break them and rebuild them so they were every bit as plastic and complacent as real dolls. Their minds warped, forced into a mode of compliance that hinged only on the vague possibility of survival, until they didn't even notice the atrocities he wrought against them. Until they just weren't themselves. Until they were only empty playthings for him to use and abuse before he finally got bored and killed them. 

Aria couldn't help but wonder what form a death like that would take. Would they be snuffed out quickly and painlessly, preferably with a bullet to the skull? Or euthanized at least somewhat humanely like death row inmates? Or would he violently snap their necks and hack them up like animals in a slaughterhouse? Worse yet, maybe he'd want one last kick before he got rid of them, and it would be a slow, drawn out death. One last puppet show. Maybe they would die choking on their own blood, emitting screams that nobody would ever hear. Maybe their bodies would never be found, buried in shallow graves in the middle of nowhere, and their loved ones would never know what happened to them. And maybe that would be for the best, assuming that they were tortured to the point of being unrecognizable in death. Maybe not having to see their mutilated bodies — and therefore not realizing the horrors they'd gone through — would be the merciful thing. Like a proverbial closed casket, meant to spare the onlooker in the aftermath. 

Although she knew what not knowing felt like — in more ways than one, with Ali’s disappearance and the enigma of -A and the ambiguous threat hanging over her right at this moment — and she knew that uncertainty like that could very well drive a person mad, if left gaping open and unresolved long enough. That state of perpetual freefall was agonizing, terrifying, always a reminder of how she'd stared into the shadowy corners of her bedroom as a little girl, left to imagine what monsters could be lurking in their depths and leaning hungrily over her as she slept. 

Whatever happened, Aria realized, it would be painful for everyone. No matter what. They couldn't escape it, not at this point.

Apparently, her tear ducts still worked, because a single tear slipped out of her left eye, slid down her temple into her hairline. She stared up at the painfully bright fluorescent lights overhead, and wished that she could die already, before any part of that gruesome, hypothetical future could become real. 

_ Please, God.  _

Only, whatever God there was couldn't see them down here, not in this underground bunker. He'd already abandoned them, cast them into purgatory to suffer. And the wicked, omnipresent entity to take his place was bustling around, apparently sorting through tools and instruments that made soul-wrenching, heart-pounding noises. There were metallic clanks, whirs like a dentist’s drill, and a stench like… nail polish remover? There were chemicals, weren't there, that smelled similar to acetone? Wasn't it something dangerous, and toxic? Spencer would know if there was or not, except Spencer was probably just as borderline incoherent with terror as Aria was. It's not like she could up and ask, anyway.

Her breath hitched painfully as a gloved hand suddenly grabbed her wrist, and she felt a damp cotton pad rub at her nails. So Charles really was just taking her nail polish off. That was it, for now. Nothing so menacing as… melting her skin off with acid or something. She struggled to breathe deeply in a vain attempt at calming herself down, but it was useless. Her eyes began to burn, although she couldn't tell if it was from dryness or fumes or this crushing sensation in her chest. 

He finished methodically removing the polish from all twenty of her nails, and moved on to presumably do the same to her friends. She couldn't tell how long the process took, as time felt both stretched out and too short. Hours or minutes could have passed in the stilted silence. She had no way of knowing, but the bright light and strong smell were beginning to give her a headache by the time he was finished, and she was starting to sweat. She could practically taste the collective fear in the air, exacerbated by the uncertainty of not knowing if their captor seriously only intended on giving them a fucking makeover. Aria didn't know if she wanted to laugh or cry at the idea, but then he moved on to running a wet cloth across her skin. 

Her stomach turned with nausea as he scrubbed her arms and legs clean, then moved to wash her torso, and  _ her chest _ , and  _ the insides of her thighs _ . Her spine was alight with adrenaline the whole time, every fiber of her body straining to fight back as he got  _ too close too close too close _ , but he didn't touch her. 

He didn't touch her —  _ thank god _ . 

He slid a hand under her shoulders and sat her upright to clean her back, and she had no choice but to slump against him like a ragdoll, her head leaned against his chest. When he was done, he pressed the bottom of his mask — the place where his mouth would be — to the side of her head, like he was giving her a kiss on the temple. Then he laid her gently back down and walked away, and she was left drowning somewhere between light-headed relief and nausea. 

He was back not a moment later, though, only this time he turned her face toward him, brandishing a makeup wipe. He took off the smudged paint she was still wearing from their macabre prom and subsequent punishment outside, and then left her alone for a while, probably busy doing the same humiliating things to the others. 

Her head was left turned to the side, and she could see that her table was on the end. There was a heavy-looking steel door about five paces to her right, the floor was tile, and the walls were a faded, sickly yellow color, exactly like the hospital’s morgue. There were shelves loaded with unlabeled bottles of chemicals and a cart that held a tray of those tools she'd heard. A counter running along the wall at her feet was occupied by various beauty products, and a clothes rack shoved into the corner held three garment bags. 

Which then begged the question: why only three? 

Was one of her friends not in this room? If so, who? Emily? Spencer? Hanna? And why? Aria really didn't want to immediately jump to the worst conclusion, which was that one of them was dead. She couldn't know for sure, anyway, so she tried to think of other possibilities. Maybe it was Spencer, who spearheaded the whole escape plan with Mona, and he’d just locked her in her room, or put her in the Hole. Not that the prospect of her best friend being punished made her feel any better, but it was better than one of them having been executed. 

He wouldn't, though, would he? As sick as it was, he loved them too much to kill them so soon. She wasn't sure about the security of Mona’s life, but he'd just gotten the rest of them to play with. If he wanted to kill them, he would've done it already, and he definitely wouldn't have put so many resources into making this prison. Three dolls just…  _ couldn't _ be enough for him. It couldn't, because if it was, Aria didn't know how they could ever come back from this. Losing one of her friends meant losing a piece of herself, and she'd rather die. 

So maybe she'd just stumbled upon an even worse outcome than them becoming dolls and eventually being murdered like the victims in one of those procedural crime dramas she used to watch with her mom and Mike. At least in that case they might still be together in the end. Being left alone would be worse. So much worse.

Charles entered her field of vision once more, skipping past the counter, the tray, and the rack, and instead went around to whatever was behind her. She heard rustling, and he reappeared with a crisp white sheet in hand. Mercifully, he draped it across her body, effectively shielding her from both the cold and his intrusive gaze, and she heard him do the same for the others. She was relieved until he returned and slipped his hands underneath her, arms barring behind her knees and across her back. He lifted her, wrapped in the sheet, and cradled her to his chest. She caught a glimpse of her friends from the corner of her eye; they looked dead. But they were all there. So why…? 

It hit her as he carried her to the door, revealing the familiar corridor. Maybe she was the odd man out. Maybe wherever he was taking her, she wouldn't be coming back. She thought that she was almost numb to the terror by now, but it slammed into her full force as they were swallowed by the shadows of the hallway. 

Even if it might spare her some suffering in the long run, she didn't want to die. Not really.

So she became almost euphoric with relief when they only went a few doors down into a room that looked surprisingly like a hair salon. An impersonal, bordering on laboratory-esque hair salon, but there were bottles of shampoo, and one of those deep sinks with a dip in the front for your head, and a padded reclining chair in front of it. The walls and floor were the same as the morgue room, and the lights were the same buzzing fluorescent bars. Fluffy white towels were stacked in rolls on a metal shelf against the wall, and she even spotted a hair dryer and a curling iron. No mirror, though. No such luxury. She'd probably look just as ghostly pale as her friends, anyway. 

He deposited her in the chair, pulled her hair into the sink, and turned the water on. Then, he went over to where the various products were and, with his back turned to her, swapped his fabric gloves for stretchy rubber ones. She didn't even get a chance to glimpse the shape or color of his hands, and she stopped trying as he grabbed a couple bottles and came back over to get started. It was almost relaxing to have her hair washed like this, and if she'd been able to close her eyes, she might've pretended that she was back home, going to her stylist for her regular wash and trim. Of course -A knew the brand and scent of her shampoo, which creeped her out as much as everything else in her replica bedroom, but the smell of something familiar and pleasant was already infinitely better than that sharp chemical smell in the morgue, or the stench of unwashed bodies that permeated the air after five human beings were left outside to rot in the elements for days. 

It felt good to be clean, at least, even if her skin was crawling. 

When her hair was rinsed, he raised the chair up and plugged the blow dryer in. The noise drowned everything out for a while, and the warm air on her neck helped to fight the chill in the air. Then, with her hair finally dry, he began styling it with expert technique, and Aria couldn't help but wonder if their kidnapper worked a day job as a hairdresser. 

Finished, he took her back to the morgue. Her friends were still frighteningly still and the room still stank of acetone, but she was unexpectedly happy to be back on her cold metal table. She hadn't been taken away and disposed of, or locked in some new, solitary punishment. They were still together. So she worried each time he picked one of them up and took them out of the room, not knowing if they'd be coming back. She still couldn't tell how much time was passing, swimming in a blur of unease as she was, but she was regaining some movement in her extremities by the time he brought back Hanna and took Spencer. 

Spencer didn't come back. 

Aria almost didn't catch it when Charles came through the door empty-handed. She couldn't see him until he walked into her peripheral, and she didn't think much of it until she realized that Spencer wasn't with him. A heavy sense of dread crashed down over her then, and she wanted to yell at him, demand to know what he'd done to her. She still couldn't even move the entirety of her feet, though, so she had to suffer the not knowing in silence as he painted their nails, did their makeup, and then maneuvered them into clean underwear. 

Her feet could move as he sat her upright to slip a pretty, light pink dress over her head. It looked exactly like something a doll would wear, and considering the makeup had consisted of the whole nine yards — blush and false lashes and sticky lipgloss — she figured that's what he was going for. Once the others were in their dresses — she glimpsed light blue and yellow fabrics, for Hanna and Emily respectively — Charles swept out of the room, dragging his tool cart behind him, leaving them alone. 

In a deathly silence, they waited for him to return. Except he didn't. For a very long time. Long enough that the feeling settled back into her limbs and she could painstakingly push herself upright. She looked over to the others, throat dry and a horrible feeling welling up in her chest. 

"Where did he take Spencer?" Emily asked, voicing what Aria was thinking. 

Hanna shivered, looking pale even with the blush on her cheeks. "I have no idea, but I feel violated. I can't wait until we get out of here and this  _ creep _ is locked up." She said the last part loudly, looking around for a camera. 

"Assuming we ever do get out of here," Emily said pessimistically, swinging her legs off the table. 

Aria and Hanna both followed suit, and they all huddled together for a moment. Aria took comfort in it, even if she was worried sick about where the missing member of their group was. 

"So what do we do now?" she asked, just as the door swung open on its own and in floated a very familiar sound. 

Cheerful piano music played from somewhere distant. They made their way toward the door, clinging onto one another, following that strange, upbeat tune, but paused on the threshold, hesitant.

“Please follow the lighted pathway,” chimed that pleasant female voice, and Aria watched the lights on the walls start to blink, the trail of them disappearing into the gloomy darkness.

Their trio followed the path all the way to the replica of the DiLaurentis living room, where Mona was playing the piano, just like she had been when they first arrived. That seemed like a lifetime ago, but Aria didn't dwell on that thought, instead she fixated on the ornate round table in the middle of the room, set up for tea, complete with lace doilies and a vase of sickly yellow roses. They were uncanny in their perfection, like everything in this place, but something about the flowers gave her comfort. They were another trapped life form to sympathize with, a symbol that life existed outside this bunker, a reminder that there were people to get back home to. 

“Mona…” Hanna began softly, trailing off. “What's going on? Where's Spencer?” 

Mona only continued to play, and Aria got a good look at her as they crossed the room. Physically, she looked the same, maybe even healthier than the last time they'd seen her, but her gaze stayed trained on her hands as her fingers flew across the keys with master precision. The music seemed to consume her. 

Aria wandered over to the table, taking a closer look at it, and noticed a small piece of folded cardstock standing like a mini tent in the center. She picked it up, read the elegant calligraphy lettering on the front that read ‘ _Dolls_ ’ and opened it. Inside were instructions, which she read aloud: 

“A tea party. What more could a girl want? Remember: good dolls smile! And bad dolls get punished. -A.” 

She flipped it over, shuddering at the words written in dark red paint on the back:

SMILE. OR ELSE.

She showed it to the others, and they all broke into uneasy grins, aware of the camera trained on them from high in the corner, and Mona stopped playing all of a sudden, striding over and beginning to seat them.

Beside the table, there was a rolling cart whose tray bore a steaming China tea pot, matching cups and saucers, and some sugar cookies. Mona passed out the dishware and served while the rest of them trained their sights on another cart — on which a flat screen TV sat. Aria's palms were beginning to sweat, a lump forming in her throat. There was something very wrong here. She watched as Mona set a place card with Spencer's name on it in front of the only vacant seat, and then excused herself to the piano. 

Just as the happy, cheerful tune started up again, the siren blared with no warning. They all flinched and reflexively covered their ears, and watched as the TV turned on. _Smile, Bitches_ , it read. The siren didn't go off until they plastered convincingly fake, wider, toothier grins on their faces, and then when all was silent, the screen switched to footage that read LIVE FEED in the corner. 

Aria’s stomach dropped, but another warning blast from the siren didn't allow her to drop her phony grin. It was a strange feeling, being consumed by itchy trepidation with a smile on your face. The space shown on screen was filmed from about the height of a tripod, and it had a straight-on view of a mostly empty space save for a drain in the floor and manacles hanging low from the ceiling. It was obvious what was meant to happen in this room, and Aria hoped she was completely wrong about where Spencer was. 

Her gut twisted into a knot when a door opened somewhere off screen and in was dragged a struggling Spencer, clad only in a pair of khakis and a tank top. She was blindfolded, but it was easy to read the terror in her expression as two hooded figures hauled her into view and forced her to her knees below the chains. “What are you doing?” she cried in a noise somewhere between a wail and a shout, voice shaking with something that Aria couldn't define as either fear or anger. 

It occurred to Aria that it was probably both, and that Spencer was probably using her go-to tactic of puffing up in the face of adversity. Her grit and courage came across as admirable, until Aria considered that Charles undoubtedly had the advantage here. Spencer was going to fight until she absolutely couldn't anymore, and here that trait was worrisome. If their captor was banking on this—whatever cruelty it was about to escalate into—being amusing, then it could be drawn out indefinitely with Spencer. Aria prayed that her best friend still had the clarity of mind to realize that broken dolls are boring, and could feign surrender until he got bored and left her alone. 

“Answer me, you bastards! What the fuck is going on?!” Spencer screamed this time, a hoarseness to her voice that betrayed her blind terror. 

No, Aria was willing to bet she was very much not in a rational state of mind. 

Her question was answered only by the manacles locking around her wrists, and then a portion of the chains were retracted into the ceiling, yanking Spencer upright with them until her toes were barely brushing the ground. 

Her best friend let out a startled, strangled cry of pain, and they watched as thin trickles of blood ran down from her wrists. They let her hang for a moment, her toes struggling to get purchase on the floor, and then the chains were yanked suddenly higher, until Spencer was suspended only by her wrists, her feet well up off the ground. She screamed loudly then, hands splaying wildly to grab onto the chains, and she tried to hold herself up that way. Of course, days of starvation had done a number on her strength, and she could only hold herself up for so long before she had to let her full body weight be supported by her wrists. It was enough that they could visibly see the joints of her arms slowly stretching out of place, and her face contorted in agony. 

Nausea roiled in Aria’s gut, and she took a shaky sip of tea, too thirsty to not drink it. It tasted fine, but there was no way she could enjoy it while Spencer was being actively tortured right in front of them. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she continued to smile, aware of the camera trained on them. 

Hanna scowled, her eyes wide and enraged, and turned to yell up at the camera. “No! I'm not going to sit here and pretend! I'm going to kill you, you _fucking_ –” 

The siren started blasting, effectively cutting her off, but that didn't deter her. She flew to her feet, just as a hooded figure on screen threw a bucket of water on Spencer. Emily noticed it too, and she grabbed Hanna by the wrist, looking just as panicked as Aria felt. 

“Hanna!” Emily yelled, her voice almost drowned out by the siren. “Hanna, sit down! Look —  _ look _ ! You're making it worse!” 

And Hanna turned her head in time to see a cattle prod jab Spencer in the ribs. The blonde’s face visibly paled, and she sank grimly back into her seat as their de-facto leader writhed. The siren cut off as Hanna slumped forward and rested her head on the table, crying, and the only thing left to hear was Spencer's guttural screams. 

Aria pressed her hands tighter over her ears. 

Finally —  _ finally _ — they stopped, and Spencer was left in hiccuping sobs, a dark stain spreading down the front of her pants, the muscles of her arms trembling violently. “Please… please stop,” she whimpered, feet kicking helplessly as she dangled. “Please, don't…” 

A sudden thump and a loud clunk of chains made her refocus her gaze on the screen, and she looked up in time to see Spencer collapsing to the floor. The hooded figure knelt down and ripped her blindfold off, then roughly grabbed her face and angled it up toward the camera. Spencer's eyes locked onto it, full of something borderline unhinged, and the realization looked downright painful as it crept slowly across her face. Her expression crumpled and she started to cry, and her tormentor released her so that she slipped to the floor, curled into a ball, and pressed her hands over her face, shielding the shame suddenly evident in every crumbling facet of her being. 

_ Oh, god, Spencer… _

Aria's heart broke for her. No, that was an understatement. She felt it as her best friend tried and failed to restrain violent, shaking sobs. Spencer kept muttering semi-coherent apologies as she cried, and Aria didn't know what for. She hadn't done anything wrong, and she sure as hell didn't deserve this. Nobody deserved this.

Except maybe Charles himself.

“I'm sorry…” came out with each wheeze of a breath Spencer took, and if Aria had been able to move freely, she would have ripped the door off its hinges and hunted Charles down. She wanted to do to him exactly what he'd done to them, to Spencer. And then she wanted to kill him. If she ever got the chance, she'd like to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until his wicked, fucked up heart stopped beating. Until she was certain that he wouldn't be hurting anyone ever again.

Blind rage beat out abject helplessness any day, but in this case it didn't have any outlet. So it burned a hole in her chest until it finally just fizzled out, until she was left feeling as utterly useless as before. She couldn't stop any of this from happening. And she couldn't stop it as the camera cut out just as a hooded figure converged on Spencer again. 

They weren't given the privilege of watching what happened next, instead they had to listen as their best friend’s agonized screams were blasted suddenly over the intercom. Which she figured was intentional, designed to let their imaginations run loose. The terror that came with not knowing what was happening, or what was going to happen to Spencer, was overwhelming. Tears were slipping down Aria’s cheeks as Spencer's screams got hoarser and hoarser, all while fucking Mona kept playing that stupid piano. Aria wanted to smash it to pieces.

_ Please stop _ , was all she could think, her inner voice whiny and pitiful like a child’s. And just about as ineffectual, too. 

The universe didn't care. It was mocking her with that fucking music. It was enjoying itself as it forced its perversions onto her, as it tore her open and apart and left her bleeding on the ground. Why should it matter what she felt? Why should it matter what Emily or Hanna or Mona felt? 

Why should it matter what Spencer felt? Spencer, who Aria had always admired for all her strength and tenacity and intelligence. Spencer, who let them step on her shoulders, who guided them, who defended them with a fierceness bordering on savagery. 

_ I don't care how far apart we are, I'll always be with you. _

Spencer, who’d been reduced to wailing like a wounded animal. 

_ You're little, but you're big. _

Right now, Aria felt absolutely tiny. 

But it didn't matter, did it? 

-.-.-.-

**Author's Note:**

> So if you feel as sick as I do after reading that, please feel free to yell at me in a comment.


End file.
